Remember When: Halloween Was Fun In The 50’s And 60’s
Walking past the Halloween displays in stores or driving by some people’s front lawns today can be a disturbing experience. Remember when Halloween was just fun – and not so dark and sinister?
When we were kids in the 50’s and 60’s, Halloween was one of the most exciting days of the year.
Bob and I both have happy memories of celebrating the holiday each Fall. Looking back, it seems like it was a more innocent, light-hearted, and less commercialized experience than it is for kids today.
Maybe I have selective memory, or maybe it’s because there were different definitions for what was offensive, but it doesn’t seem like Halloween in the 50’s and 60’s was as horrific as it is today.
No one decorated their yards with graveyards, giant spider webs, and life-sized skeletons, zombies, or scary monsters. Carving a pumpkin was the highlight of the season, and just about everyone had one on their front step or in their living room window. On October 31st, we rushed home after school to scoop it out and carve a face with a toothy grin. We couldn’t wait for dark so we could light the candle and see how it looked all lit up. (I can almost smell the burning pumpkin where the flame scorched the lid just thinking about it.)
I do remember decorating our classrooms. We cut out endless numbers of pumpkins, bats, and ghosts from construction paper and glued them to paper chains. These were draped across the walls around the room. Often, the teacher would pass out mimeographed copies of Fall-themed coloring pages. We’d fill them in and they would be displayed on the bulletin board for all to enjoy. During one art session, we arranged colorful leaves between two sheets of wax paper and the teacher ironed them together. Hanging up in the windows where the sunlight shone through, they were amazing! I remember school classrooms looking warm and cozy with all the fall colors. I don’t remember any witches, vampires, or demons in the decor.
Spooky movies were fairly innocent back then, too.
We all watched the black and white reruns of movies like Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, The Creature From the Black Lagoon, or Bride of Frankenstein. They were a little suspenseful to me when I was in grade school, but they didn’t give me nightmares. My older sisters let me watch some movies my mom wouldn’t have approved of while they were babysitting me. I vividly remember a couple of scenes in movies like The Birds or Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte that really scared me. But compared to what children are regularly exposed to today, they were pretty tame. One of my favorite things about Halloween night was watching It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. I tried to watch it with my nieces a few years ago, but they thought it was boring.
We got creative about making our own costumes for Halloween in the 50’s and 60’s, and they were usually not fiendish or creepy.
Shortly after school began in September each year, we would start making our plans for what to wear. I think you could purchase a flimsy one-piece costume in those days, but nobody did. They came with a mask that was held on by a thin elastic band. Everyone knew you couldn’t see out of the eyeholes and you might get tripped by the bad kids if you wore one.
Bob was fortunate because his dad was a police officer. He could borrow the hat, strap on a holster with some play guns, and go as a cop. He used those same cap guns to make a cowboy outfit other years. Other perennial favorites for the boys were Superman (all you needed was a towel or a sheet for a cape), a hobo (just a raggedy old shirt from your dad and a bandana tied to the end of a stick), or Frankenstein (paint your face green and walk stiffly).
For girls, an easy choice was to go as a gypsy. Everyone had dress-up clothes from their mom’s castoffs that included some sort of long, full skirt. Add a bandana tied around your head, lots of bangle bracelets, and some costume-jewelry bead necklaces, and you were ready to go. Of course, princesses and storybook characters were always popular. A standout year for me was when we had been studying Asian countries in school and I became fascinated with Japanese kimonos. My mom had a zip-up bathrobe with some fancy embroidery down the front. I begged her to let me wear it and added a wide sash around the waist and a pair of gold slippers. Once my hair was up in a bun on top of my head and I dusted my face with white powder, I was sure I looked like an authentic Geisha.
We waited all year to go trick-or-treating on Halloween when we were kids in the 50’s and 60’s.
We didn’t get treats that often, so the prospect of a bagful of sweets was way more exciting than it would be to kids today. After we carved our pumpkin and ate dinner, we donned our carefully constructed costumes. The we watched the sky, waiting for darkness to come.
In those days, we didn’t need parental chaperones. We went trick-or-treating with our siblings or our friends, and we had the entire neighborhood to cover. Luckily, the streets where we grew up were long and straight, so it was easy to map out a route and not miss any houses.
Of course, every neighborhood had at least one house that all the kids avoided. This was usually unkempt, with weeds growing in the yard, peeling paint, and a rusty car in the driveway. You never saw anyone going in or out, and stories about what might have happened there abounded. On Halloween night, like every night, it was dark and spooky. Some of the boys dared each other to run up and ring the bell. I’m sure the (most likely elderly and harmless) person living there couldn’t wait for the night to be over.
Returning home with our bounty, my sisters and I would spread everything out on the living room floor. Mom would examine it to make sure there weren’t any pins or razor blades in our candy. We routinely threw away anything homemade like popcorn balls or taffy. The rest we rationed out over the next several days to make the sugar high last as long as possible. We couldn’t wait to do it all over again the next year.